Steady As We Go
by affectivefallacy
Summary: We never got to see how Daisy got her gauntlets, between the end of season 2 and start of season 3. So I have a story to tell about that.
_Note: In the comics, Daisy's gauntlets help her control her powers and use them with greater accuracy. She has them at the start of season 3, but we never learn how she got them. In season 2 many were speculating they would come about as a progression from the gloves Jemma had designed to suppress her powers. And yet, Jemma got swallowed up by a space rock somewhere a long the way._

* * *

It was late and everywhere was quiet. The Playground's witching hour was darker than usual and Daisy was alone in the room, practicing her breathing, trying to sort through the waves of the day. She had gone to see Lincoln, to ask him about the Monolith, and with the dead end that had brought up she felt a collective ringing through the base, the sound of a final nail hammering into a coffin.

No one even needed to say anything, to know how they all were feeling. What they were all ready to resign themselves to.

Fitz had come with her. There wasn't much of a chance in hell that he wouldn't. It had only been the two of them, it wasn't worth asking others at this point. Everyone had another mission. She did, as well, but it had been one last obvious avenue and she was willing to go down it.

It might not have been worth it, to watch the way Fitz seemed to collapse under the weight of his own breath when she emerged from the room and relayed what Lincoln had told her.

She'd watched him visibly deflate, not trying to stay his trembling hands by his sides, and she'd closed her eyes, trying to feel out the vibrations screaming through him. Not to do anything, but because she wanted to share in it for just a moment. She wanted to feel it - after over a month she felt like she was going numb. Fitz never went numb, he felt everything, every inch of it, and he never mitigated letting it all out.

"I'm sorry," she had said at last, opening her eyes as his breathing started to steady.

"No, it ... thanks Sk-Daisy."

She'd fixed her eyes on him, tracing the lines on his face that seemed to have appeared in just the past few weeks, the scratching stubble growing up them, his whole face darkened by something imperceptible.

"You can call me either way, Fitz. Really." The last thing he needed to worry about was something like that.

He'd nodded and turned to walk out of the building, not speaking for the rest of the way back to the base and disappearing somewhere as soon as they arrived.

Maybe he had resigned himself to it, too.

The sound of footsteps approaching from behind startled her, and Daisy whirled around, senses heightened and body tensed, to see Fitz standing in front of her, the first she'd seen him in hours.

He wasn't sleeping either … and she saw he was holding something in his hands.

"Fitz?"

Her friend blinked, as if coming back down from somewhere in front of her, and he looked down at what he was holding. "I've got … these."

Daisy edged carefully, eyes softening with compassion but searching his movements with concern. "These what?"

"Well, I - Jemma and I -," he stopped and Daisy's eye drifted to the strained muscles around his neck, the visible lump in his throat, above the rumpled collar of his shirt. "It was … what we were working on … before."

Daisy's eyes snapped back up to Fitz's and they locked for a moment, two silent beats, standing surrounded by the dim and echoing chambers of the Playground, until Fitz shifted his eyes away, chest rising and falling under steady deep breaths. He held his hands out, with the item rested snuggly between his palms.

"I just finished it up."

Daisy's gaze fell with his outstretched arms, and she reached out a hand to ghost her fingers across the cool black surface, before picking up and turning one over in her hand. They were a pair of gauntlets. Of gloves.

"For your ... ," Fitz started, coughing to clear a snag in his throat. Daisy turned them in her hands, running her fingers along the sleek design of the sturdy but light material. "For your shaking," Fitz said, and Daisy thought there was the smallest detection of a smile in his voice, that flitted like a wavering candlelight before being swallowed back behind his hollowed appearance. "They'll help you have more control and precision. They're not … not like the gl-gloves, uh, that Jemma designed before. They don't … don't try to stop your -"

"They just steady it?" Daisy asked, looking back up at Fitz.

He blinked and then nodded, holding out a hand and delicately tracing a finger along what looked like the impression of a heart line through the palm of the gauntlet.

"There's weight at strategic points along the body, in your hands and arms. It works down into the muscle and nerves, so that even when you - … you're shaking from the inside out, you can have more control inside and just focus your energy outward."

Daisy smiled, a secure feeling that fell naturally across her lips, soft and sure. She slipped the one over her arm, flexing and testing the feel. Almost immediately a warm weight spread up through her limbs that anchored her. The small and erratic jumping and tremors inside her body steadied easily to a rhythmic thrum. She took the other gauntlet in hand, looking earnestly to her friend standing in front of her, tired eyes and hands in pockets, shoulders hunched from desperate hours spent bent over papers and research and … this.

"Thank you, Fitz."

He nodded, eyes dropping to his feet and chin against his collarbone.

"Really, thank you … for both of you."

She watched his mouth twitch and jawline tighten, feeling the racing of his heart in his chest radiate outward in her own. The weight of the one gauntlet in her hand dropped her eyes down, the fitted glove around the other arm, pressing steady, firm, and warmly against her skin. The heavy symbol of the gift, the labor and love of her two friends, and Fitz even now for her with everything he was …

It was beautiful and bitter at the same time. She hoped - maybe against all reason by this point - that she wasn't holding the very last piece of FitzSimmons in her hands.

Fitz's sharp breath tickled against her ear and Daisy dragged her eyes to his face, staring back into her's now, shoulders straightened and eyes blinked free of glimmering moisture, left with only a spark against the blue.

"You can thank her, when she gets back."

A tremor shook out through the room, rattling the fixtures of the walls, and with it Fitz did not flinch. Daisy closed her eyes and breathed, swallowing, flexing her arm against the weight of her new glove, and steadying the space around her.

She opened her eyes, searched Fitz's clear face, and nodded.

"I'll thank her when she gets back."

* * *

 _This fic is actually an excerpt from a longer fic I am working on, but after I wrote it I thought it could work as a stand alone, in the long interim between my conceiving of the longer idea and actually finishing it. Some things have been rearranged, edited, taken out, and added from how it would appear in the original fic for the sake of clarity as a stand alone piece._


End file.
